The 'A' Word

Pilpelim Tzehubim

A comic drama about a family that grows peppers for export in the south of Israel and discovers to its astonishment that its lovely, brilliant and musical 3-year-old son is autistic. Ayelet, 42, the boy's mother, learns from the doctor who diagnosed him that the verdict isn't final, and that through intense work there are those children who have overcome it. She's convinced they can grow the child out of autism and make him "normal" by the age of five. Ayelet insists on hiding this from the neighbors in the small, gossipy town, until she's able to "normalize" the child.

Due to their distance from the center and from professional therapists, the entire family, as well as close friends and the Thai farmhands, take on the mission of caring for the boy around the clock and teaching him how to communicate. Along the way, through use of his communication tools and songs, he teaches them a lesson in communication, and mostly he teaches them how screwed up their own communication skills are.